Chapter 6: Steady Now.

The lady left.

Leaving me alone with my thoughts after poking around the bracelet.

I looked it over and saw a new timetable.

One that would supposedly replace my normal school work going forward.

At first glance, it looked like the kind of lifestyle a prospective Olympian might have.

Stretches and calisthenics first thing in the morning, followed by a short marathon every other day.

The days where I wasn't running would see me swimming.

After that would come a short break where I'd memorize all the dungeon's monsters from the first floor downwards; as well as the most effective ways to defeat them.

Then I'd do some more endurance training. Inside the actual dungeon.

With uncle Uter no less.

Him and someone else who was presumably more qualified than coach Homer had been.

The document specifically stated that I wouldn't be fighting monsters unless they'd been heavily wounded beforehand for the next two weeks.

After that....

'It'll be fine. If they wanted to kill me, I'd be dead already. Plus, that lady said that coach Homer had been punished for letting me get hurt. These people don't want to hurt me or uncle Uter. Besides...'

They had magic.

Among all the other things that had rocked my world, that fact had been the slowest to set in.

These people had magic.

Actual, honest to goodness magic.

Marco, Ramji and Drew were my age and yet they could move faster than I could process.

Monsters weren't an issue for them.

In fact, those three seemed bored.

Like they were only fighting weak monsters because they had to babysit me.

I gulped, realizing now that any of them could have killed me with the slightest bit of effort.

'Would I be that strong, if I got a core?'

Coach Homer said I could.

In fact, he seemed to take it for granted that anyone could get a good core with decent effort.

I clenched my fists.

'If I had a core. If I had magic, then I'd be able to take care of my family. I could keep them safe. The apocalypse has to be real, if all this other stuff is. The only way to live will be to be stronger than the monsters.'

My heart hammering inside my chest once more, but from excitement, rather than fear.

Uncle Uter came along later that night.

His face was haggard. Mired by grief and regret.

"Cecil...I. I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. I'm so, so sorry."

"Its okay uncle." I said, smiling in hopes of cheering him up. "I wasn't hurt too bad."

The lie came easily to my lips once I saw his face.

Whatever had happened prior to this, the fact remained that we only had one way forward now that we were in on the secret.

My uncle was a good man and he'd always been there to take care of me. He couldn't know how bad it had been, or else he might try to escape and get himself into trouble.

That simply wasn't a choice in our current situation.

My so-called teammates had bee thoroughly superhuman, and they'd been level 1.

There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that the adults would be much, much stronger than they had been.

Heck, there were probably folks here who could read minds or, I don't know, teleportation or magical tracking.

We'd be caught in seconds.

Best case scenario, we were reprimanded and separated from then on.

Worse case scenario...

I didn't even want to think about it.

"Seriously uncle. I'm good. Its all good. I'm excited! People have magic here and they said we'd get magic too!"

"Yes." He said gravely. "They did mention it once or twice."

Uncle Uter sat down next to me.

His tired eyes looking down at me with apprehension.

"Cecil. I.... I saw. I saw them bring you in. I... I'm sorry." The words seemed to break him.

His eyes watering for the first time since I'd known him.

"I should have done better. I should have known something was fishy about this whole mess. I should never have brought you and Eva here. You deserved better. I..."

His fists were clenched so tightly that they'd gone white.

"I should be stronger than this. I should be strong for you. I should be someone who knows what they're doing and what's best for the family. But I don't. I...I've seen the monsters. I've seen the dungeons. I've seen the actual paperwork and all the planning Mr. Robertson has put into this town. This whole worldwide conspiracy. Its real. Its real and I've led us right into the heart of it and I don't know how to move on from this now that I know what's coming."

Stolen novel; please report.

Small trickles of blood could be seen coming from his hands now.

He lowered his head, as if in shame.

"I was excited about it. About magic being real and about us being chose, when I found out you'd been hurt. I...It was like the whole world collapsed. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. All I could think about was you. Not moving. Lying on this...this bed. While I was celebrating. I'm sorry Cecil. I'm so, so sorry."

My hand reached out by itself. Placing itself on his lap.

"Its not your fault uncle. No one could have seen this coming. Getting hurt, was my, mistake. I did something stupid. It won't happen again. Let's give this place a try. For real this time. Lets get as strong as we can and get actual magic powers. I know things will get better after that."

Tears were still falling down his face, when he lifted his eyes to meet mine once more.

"I'm sorry Cecil. I'm sorry you have to be so mature for my sake. For all our sakes. That isn't your responsibility. It shouldn't be. I'm sorry you couldn't stay young for a little while longer. You deserve better."

He lunged forward. His meaty arms tightening around my skinny frame.

"I won't let anything bad happen to you again Cecil. I'm going to train. I'm going to get strong. Strong enough to protect this family. I swear it."

I hugged him back. Feeling his warmth. His feelings.

"Me too. Uncle. Me too."

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I was out of the hospital two days later.

A fact that shocked me most of all.

"For the fifth time son, You're all right."

"I, uh. I get that. Really, I do. I feel, sort of all right, but... I mean...."

I waved my hands over my legs. As if that could get the meaning across.

The nurse looked down, then up again. Her eyebrow raised.

Her judgmental stare cut into me like a flurry of knives.

Still, I persisted.

"I was told that both my legs were broken."

"That's right."

"And now you're telling me they're fine?"

"Yes. See? You're starting to understand. Good boy."

I stammered. Taken aback by the sheer weight of her condescension.

"Aren't I supposed to stay in intensive care for, oh, I don't know, another week? At least? I've known kids who do dumb things in their spare time and they usually took a couple of months before coming back to school."

"Ah, yes. The, non-magical procedures."

Somehow, someway, she managed to grow even more insufferably smug.

"Mr. Fowler. I believe you'll find that our methods are far more effective at healing wounds rapidly. The fact that it took this long shows how badly you were hurt and how low your stats are. The magic is less effective on those with, weaker constitutions. Most of our patients never actually set foot in the hospital, since healers are usually stationed outside the dungeon. Yours was a particularly bad case. Its even made you somewhat famous around these parts."

I flinched at her words.

Suddenly dreading what my peers would say.

I'd been bullied a bit in elementary school, but it hadn't lasted for long. I had a feeling that getting on the bad side of literal superhumans would be a completely different matter however.

My mind went back to Elsie. To how she'd first appeared in front of me. How she'd known about what was going to happen, but chose to taunt me instead of telling me what was going on.

I sighed and shook my head.

"Right. Okay. So, are there any side-effects I should be concerned about?"

"Yes, actually."

My ears perked up.

All thoughts of social isolation vanishing at once.

"It's nothing too serious." She assured me.

A statement that immediately brought a wave of dread over me.

"Its, only, overusing healing can be detrimental for growth at early levels. Especially at level zero. It can stunt the development of your stats. It wouldn't be a problem for most of our locals, since they already have cores, but you, your uncle and your aunt should be careful when you train. There were some cases of settlers getting stage 1 or stage 2 cores because of this. Mr. Robertson was only starting the town you see, so the training regiments weren't as organized or streamlined."

"What happened to those people?"

"The flunkies?"

She shrugged.

"Some are around. Living here and there. They usually take care of the more, menial jobs around here. The ones that are safer and don't require you to delve as deep. Things like accounting or managing the town's supplies and communication. Others were sent out by Carlyle in order to take over more dungeons around the world. Some of the other facilities even have more people than ours, though none of them have as many advanced core families."

She gave me an assessing look.

"Newcomers are usually taken in through those bases, instead of this one. They tend to perform mass inductions for new employees on the regular, since Mr. Robertson's businesses have been expanding. I don't suppose any of you were told why Mr. Robertson wanted you here instead of there?"

'Jeez lady. Could you be any less subtle? I don't think people in Mongolia got your meaning.'

"Nope." I said. Truthfully.

I had absolutely no idea why this was happening to us in particular; and even if I did, I sure wasn't about to tell someone as rude as her.

I turned on my heels before she could say anything else and walked away at a brisk pace.

The nurse clicked her tongue after I left. So loudly that I could hear her from several paces away.

I was beyond caring however.

My schedule had been moved up in light of my early discharge, meaning this would be the first day of magic boot camp.

A part of me chaffed at the notion. Stressed about leaving school at just fourteen.

Annoyingly, those thoughts refused to dissipate, no matter how many times I reminded myself that I had little choice in the matter and that the magic people were convinced the world was literally ending in three years or so.

I made my way over to the parking lot, only to look around in confusion.

'Where's uncle Uter? He said he'd be here to pick me up.'

"Your Uncle's not coming." A familiar voice stated.

I whirled, chills going down my spine as beads of sweat gathered on my forehead.

He was here.

Wearing a sporty shirt and yoga pants.

Looking like nothing serious had happened between us.

"I was told you wouldn't be coming. Coach Homer."

He snorted.

"I'm not. My father will be the one in charge of your training. He'll be coming by any second."

"So, why are you here?"

He stopped at that. Taking what looked like a deep, steadying breath.

"I wanted to...to apologize."

I stared at him in disbelief.

He either didn't notice, or didn't care.

"You kids were under my supervision when we delved. Your safety should have been my top priority. It wasn't. I saw the Rippers leap. Both of them. I could have stopped them if I wanted to, but..."

"But?"

"But I thought it would have made a good lesson."

I blinked.

Several times in quick succession.

Not quite able to process the unimaginable amounts of nonsense coming out of this man's mouth.

I mean, what?

WHAT?

That's why you let me get my legs broken?

Are you high?

Actually, yeah.

That sort of checks out.

He continued speaking, not caring that I was stupefied beyond words.

"It would have been a teachable moment on tactics. More specifically, about working in groups. The correct move would have been to sidestep the attacker or roll out of the way entirely. That wouldn't have tied you down and it would have given your teammates the opportunity to use their skills in tandem, on enemies that were aiming for you instead of them. That would have meant the Rippers were distracted and I would have shown you that mental skills like Ramji's or Drew's can take advantage of even the slightest gap in the opponent's concentration. It would have demonstrated how you could and would be a valuable asset to the team. To you, as well as them. Yet, I didn't count on regular people being so..."

"Weak?" I offered.

"Fragile." He supplied instead. "It was a miscalculation that turned a lesson into a reckless rush into danger. It was also a mistake on, my part that almost cost me the lives of one of my students. For that, I am sorry. I promise that, should I ever get the chance to teach you again, it will not be repeated."

He waited, after he was done.

Perhaps waiting for me to forgive him.

If so, he was fresh out of luck.

My legs might be healed, but I was still getting hints of phantom pain every few minutes.

The nurse had, of course, dismissed it as normal for one's first time, but it didn't make the pain any less bearable.

Coach Homer waited for another few seconds, before nodding his head solemnly.

Then, he turned right around, bent his knees, and jumped.

So high that he cleared four or five blocks.

Not buildings.

Blocks.

My jaw hit the floor.

'In hindsight. Maybe being rude to the superman wasn't a good idea.'